This is why, in my opinion, the bible was never meant to be taken in any literal or specific way. And now we have a lot of ignorant people using it to backup their ridiculous beliefs/statements, and cherry picking what they like or what can be interpreted to their advantage. It just sounds like a story that was meant to teach morality to people. I feel like the people who wrote it would laugh in modern religion's face for taking it so seriously. Then again, the morality aspect only went so far - they still stoned women and treated them like property, for example.
I appreciate your thoughts on the subject, but you can't blame people for holding it all literally. The bible typically doesn't differentiate between the literal and the figurative, so it CAN be a bit hard to discern. Also, at the time that the individual segments of the bible were written they were pretty progressive. In the New Testament (the part with Jesus, I don't want to assume how much background knowledge you have) women could own property and not get married, which was a ridiculous notion in the first century. The New Testament also holds everyone as equals, where nobody is any better than anybody else. A Christian is only better off than any other human being because we've been forgiven our sins after seeking that forgiveness. We're still sinners, just sinners who get our slate wiped clean as long as we strive to improve. I know too many of my fellow believers who put themselves on a pedestal, an act which the bible specifically condemns. It's not the bible's fault that humans are fallible, it's our own.
That's what I'm saying - the bible is a decent book, and like you said, fairly progressive for its time, but people fail to apply it to their lives properly. You kind of jumped back on your point there - at first you said that it's wrong to blame people for holding it all literally (which I agree, it's too far down the road to really blame anyone), but then you admit that it's our fault for being fallible (unless those two are unrelated). But you are right, the bible is probably difficult to read through, but I still see no reason to take anything absolutely literally - its meant to serve as a moral guide, not a constitution.
Haha, I guess you could see it as me being a bit hypocritical, I'm sorry! Let me rephrase: We are, by nature, pretty messed up. I think anybody would agree with that. So it can't be helped that some would take EVERYTHING in the bible literally, even the stuff that isn't meant to be taken that way. That doesn't excuse the mistake, though, it just recognizes that it's natural.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the bible and its authors had the right ideas, but due to our nature, like you said, we were bound to make a mess of it and cause the troubles that we have today. Just the fact that Christianity has split into dozens, if not hundreds of different sects, all interpreting the bible in their own ways and modifying it, says so much about how we fail to simply follow along and be united under the same, general moral rule of "Be cool, man." (I'm pretty sure that was pretty much all Jesus talked about).
He also called the Pharisees (a self-righteous group of Jews at the time) a "Brood of Vipers" more than once, so that's neat. I think Jesus summarized himself pretty well in Matthew 22:36-40